The Honest Truth

On a farm in Tuscany, dinner tastes extra sweet for a reason…

Tonight, something strange is happening at the dinner table: we’re eating cake.

It’s strange because Pierangelo, the man whose farm I’m staying at, doesn’t like sweets.

He’s made one amazing meal after another, going way beyond the typical Italian fare of  pasta, meat and pizza. Pierangelo cooks vegetarian casseroles, tasty soups and bean-based dishes, all of which we wash down with local red wine.

But never dessert.  He doesn’t have a sweet tooth.

I arrived on Pierangelo’s farm six days ago, a paradise 625 metres up in

these mountains hug Pierangelo's house

the Tuscan mountains with over 100 chestnut trees, 20 rows of rasberry plants and six donkeys. I’m here to help with the annual October chestnut harvest, along with a hodge-podge of foreigners.

There’s the 60-something couple from small-town Quebec who speak exclusively french (save for the man who has a basic english vocabularly) and the 20-something couple from Brooklyn, one of whom speaks pretty good Spanish.

Pierangelo has a working level of both Spanish and French (though he insists he doesn’t understand Quebecois, as does his partner Cristina, who knows a little French).

Then there’s me, who knows the Quebecois accent well (and probably speaks with it a little) and speaks Italian. The Brooklyn couple dubbed me Nicole Kidman from “The Interpreter”.

The french couple is working on farms to save money during their 3 month long Italian trip, the American couple are making their way to Russia to do the Transmongolian railway that ends in China, and I’m here to learn Italian. We all came together for the common good of chestnuts.

Every morning we go off into the woods to collect the chestnuts. They fall from trees in big spiky shells that look like the things you’re supposed to avoid in a super mario game. You crack the shell open with your foot or gloves and take out the chestnut. If a falling shell one hits you on the back, the thin spikes (a type of tannin) make your skin itch for days.

I can’t describe the feeling of being in the middle of the woods, surrounded by huge chestnut trees, listening to the rain-like sound of shells periodically falling and donkeys roar. Land before time shit.

The afternoons we were free and around 8:30 p.m. we all meet for dinner.

Pierangelo’s kitchen perfectly fits the rustic Tuscan stereotype. In the middle is a long, dark wooden table, where he casually places slices of white bread for every meal. There’s a warm, orange hue to the walls, and the shelves are home made with pots and pans hanging in every direction.

Not the real table but looks pretty good too, no?

There’s  one communal room in the house of which the kitchen takes up half.  Dividing the two sides is a big white furnace, and the living is made up of a couch, a small t.v. and a big loom.

Pierangelo is in his 50’s with a mop of curly grey hair, an earring, and a soft, lispy speech. He escaped to the countryside from Florence when he was a teenager, in protest of Italian politics and a life of consumerism. After living on a commune in the Tuscan country side, he and some friends started building houses in Borgo San Lorenzo, the mountain property he lives on now.

He had met Cristina a few years before, who was living on a different commune, and she moved in with him. They had two kids (now young adults) but never married and act more like friends.

Pierangelo has travelled a fair bit, which accounts for his international cuisine. He spent time in Africa, and South America, fostering his passion for hiking. He’s a quiet man and oddly calm. He never made us feel guilty for kicking back in the afternoons when his day was half over.

It’s riding with him in the car that I learned the most about him. He tells me the problem with calm people is that they bottle everything up, and then explode. And speaking of bottles, Pierangelo has the bad habit of keeping one beside him in the cupholder, and on a long trip, stopping every now and then for beer at a roadside bar.

The curious, but maybe normal thing for functioning alcoholics, is that his demeanour never changed. His face was always a reddish hue, but he maintained his calm, pleasant composure.

Cristina drinks like a bird. A quarter glass of wine at dinner and she’s done. She’s a nurse at an old age home and hates her job. She’s a lanky 46-year-old with a child-like demeanour: she touches my arm a lot, talks quietly and says things under her breath like a student trying not to get caught.  She has pieces of died red hair around her short dark hair that match her red-framed glasses. She says though Pierangelo has many good qualities, his drinking isn’t one of them.

When she comes home from work tonight, we’re already on dessert.

For dinner, Pierangelo bought us each a ball of Mozzarella di Buffalo, the more expensive and delicious sibling of cow’s milk mozzarella, and made a soup with rice and vegetables.

There was no second course because instead, he serves us scacciata (a type of croissant like pastry also used for savoury pies) with a grape filling. Since it’s not too sweet, he likes it.

After we eat, the Quebec couple does the dishes and goes to bed. The Americans stick around, because the guy, Rob, is feeling sick, and Cristina’s prepared him a bucket of hot water with drops of teatree oil to help his breathing.

The phone rings and Pierangelo stands up to answer it. He says a couple of words in Italian, and takes the portaphone outside.

Rob suddenly lifts his head from over the hot bucket and says “Is it his birthday?”

“Noooo,” I say, thinking since I spent the whole day with Pierangelo and he didn’t say anything, it couldn’t be.

To be sure, I traslate to Cristina.

“Si,” she says, casually. “Lui non piace dirlo a nessuno (He doesn’t like to tell anyone).”

I tell Rob he was right. “How did you know?” I ask.

“He said something about being another year older,” he says. “I guess my Italian’s pretty good.”

For us city kids, not celebrating a birthday wasn’t gonna fly.

“Should we sing?” I ask excitedly. “Let’s light a candle.”

Cristina hesitantly agrees, but on the condition Pierangelo knows she didn’t spill the beans.

We find a tea candle, light it, and put it beside what’s left of the cake. We top up his glass of red wine.

We turn off the lights, and prepare for his entrance. In the meantime, I teach the americans the Italian words to Happy Birthday.

Finally, after our eyes are long accustomed to the one candlelight, we hear the door open.

We burst into a butchered version of “Tanti Auguri.”

Pierangelo smiles, and looks suspiciously at Cristina.

“Rob ti a sentita al telefono (Rob heard you on the phone,)” she says, innocently.

We turn on the lights and tell him to make a wish.

Pierangelo nonchalantly blows out candle and when I ask him what he wished for, he vaguely says he’s always thinking of wishes. He says he’s had enough cake but takes the wine voluntarily. Then he tries to squirm out of the birthday spotlight and change the subject.

I ask him why he didn’t say anything, and he predictably says he doesn’t believe in birthdays. It’s just another day where he’s older than someone who’s 52.

The cake? The mozzarella? Okay, he admits, those were for the occasion.

That night we drink more wine, and Pierangelo ends up attaching a hammock across the living room and falling asleep.

It’s nice to know that even the most humble of farm men, if secretly, still commemorate another year gone by.